Human Rights Initiatives at Cardozo Law

Human Rights Initiatives Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law | Yeshiva University Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights

Photo by Dominic Nahr (2008)

The Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic meets with GuaranĂ­-KaiowĂĄ leaders to discuss indigenous land rights.

About the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights The Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR) is a leading global center for the study, teaching, and promotion of human rights. CLIHHR strengthens laws, norms and institutions to prevent mass atrocities, protect affected populations and rebuild societies in the wake of atrocities.

Originally founded in 2005 by Professor Richard Weisberg, CLIHHR began under the leadership of Professor Sheri P. Rosenberg as the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Program, engaging in education, publication and advocacy to remember and learn from the Holocaust in order to respond to the human rights challenges of our time.

Maturing from a scholarly program into an institute and human rights clinic with practical tools, today CLIHHR is led by Professor Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum and responds to the growing global need for scholarly, policy and advocacy work to prevent atrocities and promote human security.

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PREVENT AT R O C I T E S

PROTECT P O P U L AT I O N S

We leverage institutional expertise and resources to challenge discriminatory policies and practices to prevent individuals from becoming targets for mass atrocities.

Individuals displaced by genocide and other mass atrocities need protection. We defend refugee rights, represent asylum seekers, and advocate for state adherence to international law.

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REBUILD SOCIETIES We assist in processes of truth, justice, accountability, reparation and non-recurrence of violence.

As a “think tank,” CLIHHR furthers the theory and scholarship of human rights and atrocity prevention, while its “action arm”—the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic—trains law students in human rights and atrocity prevention practice.

Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic As part of the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights, the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic provides students with hands-on legal training under the supervision of clinical professors and other faculty members. The clinic trains the next generation of human rights advocates and offers students the opportunity to learn practical skills while making a difference.

The clinic adheres to the institute’s three-part framework for preventing genocide and other mass atrocities, recognizing that prevention implies protecting populations and rebuilding during and after crisis.

Clinic students partner with human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international law experts to experience human rights advocacy in its various forms.

The clinic litigates before international and regional tribunals, investigates human rights violations, publishes cutting-edge academic and policy scholarship on atrocity prevention, and engages in strategic advocacy before the United Nations and other relevant bodies. The clinic provides students with a unique lens through which to view issues, such as forced migration and identity-based discrimination and violence.

While in the clinic, students sharpen transferable lawyering skills, including complex problem solving, legal research and writing, client interviewing and counseling, collaboration, and empathy.

Benjamin B. Ferencz, former Nazi war crimes investigator, chief prosecutor of the Einsatzgruppen case at Nuremberg, and longtime advocate for rule of law and international justice, inspires students in the clinic named in honor of his life’s work: law not war.

Professor Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum and students work on the Jesuits Massacre Documentation Project, managing an ever-growing database of documents related to the November 1989 Salvadoran military massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

PROJECTS The Holocaust Remembrance and Justice Project continues its pioneering work to preserve memory, further understanding, seek justice and train the next generation of lawyers to engage in thoughtful advocacy. As part of the project, Founding Professor Richard Weisberg and European Advisor and Visiting Professor Eric Freedman are involved in research, teaching and practice to address ongoing, widespread and partially unresolved European Holocaust-era spoliation and restitution matters. Cardozo students participate in preserving memory and restoring a measure of justice in these areas.

The Law and Armed Conflict Project conducts scholarship, teaching and training in the complexities of law and war in the 21st century. Led by Visiting Professor Gabor Rona, the project applies international law to the dynamic nature of war, e.g., in

state responses to terrorism, the role of non-state actors like ISIS, the new cyberspace battlefield, and the growing role of private military and security contractors in conflict zones.

The Atrocity Prevention Legal Training (APLT) Project works with U.S. law faculty to develop methodologies and materials to integrate, or “mainstream,� a domestic atrocity prevention lens in law school teaching across the curriculum. APLT Project Director Deena Hurwitz has convened faculty in workshops to discuss doctrines, cases and topics to teach law students professional tools and frameworks that will help them identify and mitigate structural and identity-based violence.

Students in the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic conducted a fact-finding trip to Favela MarĂŠ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

RECENT EVENTS AND PANELS

SELECT HUMAN RIGHTS COURSES

Taking: The Intersection Between Colonialism and Consent in Gender-Based Violence

Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic

Hate Speech and the Culture Wars

Citizenship and Statelessness

Justice for the Yazidi Genocide

Contemporary Conflicts and the Law of War

International Law and National Security: A View From Abroad on Current Trends in Targeting, Detention and Trials

Cybersecurity and the Law

The Uses of Truth: Truth Commission Archives, Justice and the Search for the Disappeared in El Salvador Strategies for Promoting Human Rights Through the Private Sector: The Shareholder, the Advocate, and Finding Common Ground Film Screening: 1945

European Legal Systems and the Holocaust and Their Aftermath in U.S. Federal Court Indigenous Rights in the Americas International Criminal Law International Humanitarian Law International Human Rights Law International Law

Students attended the Justice for the Yazidi Genocide Conference in Germany to strategize ways forward for justice and accountability for genocide and crimes against humanity.

FACULTY AND STAFF

RICHARD H. WEISBERG

FARAZ SANEI

CLIHHR Founding Director Walter Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law

Telford Taylor Clinical Teaching Fellow Visiting Instructor of Clinical Law

Richard Weisberg directs the Holocaust Remembrance and Justice Project at CLIHHR. He has helped Holocaust survivors to litigate successfully in American federal courts.

Faraz Sanei teaches human rights and supervises students on human rights cases and projects in the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic.

His scholarship focuses on freedom of religion, the rights to equality and nondiscrimination, human rights law implementation in the United States, and the role of faith leaders in atrocity prevention.

JOCELYN GETGEN KESTENBAUM Assistant Clinical Professor of Law Director, Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic Faculty Director, CLIHHR Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum directs both CLIHHR and the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic. Her scholarship focuses on international human rights, indigenous rights, public health, gender justice and atrocity prevention.

ERIC ALEXANDER FREEDMAN Visiting Professor of Law Eric Freedman is CLIHHR’s European Advisor, who appears frequently before the French restitution commission on behalf of victims and their heirs. Since 2001, he has served as banking research consultant to the Wiesenthal Centre Europe, part of the French Commission on Holocaust-era Spoliation Indemnification.

ALI CAIN Program Coordinator Ali Cain coordinates all aspects of the institute’s administration and programming. She is interested in promoting human rights through research, policy reform and diplomacy.

AFFILIATED FACULTY C. PATTY BLUM Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley

MALVINA HALBERSTAM Professor Emerita

DEBORAH PEARLSTEIN Professor of Law

GABOR RONA Visiting Professor of Law Gabor Rona directs CLIHHR’s Law and Armed Conflict Project. He teaches international human rights, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.

MONROE PRICE Professor of Law and Former Dean

MICHEL ROSENFELD Professor of Law

JESSICA ROTH Professor of Law

DEENA R. HURWITZ Atrocity Prevention Legal Training Project Director

DAVID RUDENSTINE

Deena Hurwitz directs CLIHHR’s Atrocity Prevention Legal Training Project. She has taught human rights law since 2000 and furthers scholarship on domestic law and atrocity prevention.

SUZANNE STONE

Professor of Law and Former Dean

Professor of Law

EKOW YANKAH Professor of Law

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Twitter: @CardozoCLIHHR

www.cardozo.yu.edu cardozo.clihhr@yu.edu

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